For they ne sen whare by to go.
So faren prestes now by dawe,
They beth blynde in Goddes lawe, etc.
MS. Cotton. Claud. A. II.
It had previously been applied in the same manner to the parish priests by the author of a long French poem (apparently written in England in the fourteenth century) entitled Le Miroir de l'Ome (Speculum Hominis), as follows:—
Dieus dist, et c'est tout verité,
Qe si l'un voegle soit mené
D'un autre voegle, tresbucher
Falt ambedeux en la fossée.
C'est un essample comparé